Here’s Why Black People in Canada Are Healthier Than Those in the U.S. | TakePart

Researchers say it doesn’t have to do with socioeconomic status or Canada’s health care system.

Researchers are finding that racism and a legacy of American slavery may play an even bigger role in health disparities, a revelation that is being unearthed by diving deep into numbers that compare the health of America’s black population with that of blacks in a country where the African slave trade wasn’t significant: Canada.

Chantel Ramraj, a researcher at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, set out to compare the differences between the health of blacks and whites in Canada and the U.S. The study, published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, found that black Canadians fare better than black Americans, even after controlling for socioeconomic factors and bad health behaviors. Researchers believe that means there must be other reasons why disparities exist between the two countries, such as the biological legacy of slavery and ongoing systemic racism in America.